tamasha

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Marathi तमाशा (tamāśā), from Classical Persian تماشا (tamāšā), ultimately from Arabic مَشَى (mašā, “to walk”).

Noun

tamasha (countable and uncountable, plural tamashas)

1. A visual art form from Maharashtra, India, involving singing and dancing.
   • c.1885, A.L.O.E. The Wondrous Sickle

     We had fine clothes, and feasting, and drum-beating, and fireworks let off in our village. It was a grand tamasha!

2. (colonial India, historical) Any traditional indigenous public ceremony.
   • 1915, Valentine Williams, With Our Army in Flanders, page 287:

     I went to a Tamasha, as the Indian troops call these affairs, one fine Sunday afternoon in May. A broad plateau in the middle of the fields had been selected for the sports, and when I arrived an enormous crowd, as picturesque as any I have ever seen, was thronging round the ropes.

   • 2014, James Lambert, “A Much Tortured Expression: A New Look At `Hobson-Jobson'”, in International Journal of Lexicography, volume 27, number 1, page 60:

     This superficial description is all the information the text has on the subject of the Muharram, and it is clear that to the author such activity was to be regarded as a tamasha, an outlandish ceremony of value to the foreign visitor only as a spectacle.

Alternative forms

• tomasha, tumasha

Anagrams

• Samatha, shamata

Swahili

Etymology

Borrowed from Classical Persian تماشا (tamāšā).

Pronunciation

• Audio (Kenya)

  (file)

Noun

tamasha (n class, plural tamasha) or tamasha (ma class, plural matamasha)

1. festival, show, spectacle